I took myself at my word this past week and really focused on doing work around the house and the yard. The wife is redoing both bathrooms in the house, and I relented and let her spend some serious money. Where I would go in for just painting and chrome fixtures, she is looking at tile and something besides chrome. I can’t argue too much with the updates as the house is 40 years old and things need to be addressed. For example, wax rings for toilets only last so long. Sooner or later, they deteriorate and need to be replaced; you just hope you do it in time before leaks cause major damage. Anyway, we are doing the labor ourselves, so that is saving enough money to cover her higher end items. Besides, it also gives me an opportunity to learn and refresh some skills. It was all I could do to spend the money for the upgrades and not whine about how many canned goods the money would buy. However, the way I have it figured, this is emotional capitol investment, as the he wife will recognize that she really won’t have much to say when I come in with some prepping purchase.

I also held to my promise of not spending my time reading so much on the internet. (Working on the bathrooms and the yard kept me distracted.) I found that by doing so, I quit worrying so much and could focus better on my immediate goals. I’ll tweak my plan for new worries next week. The way I see it, I can’t do everything at once, so I need to get some things completed before moving on to newer things, otherwise, nothing really gets done.

I did get a few things accomplished this week:

I cut down all the old out of control azaleas around the perimeter of our yard. Aesthetically it looks much better, but from a security standpoint, it is a significant improvement. I’ll replant with something that will continue to allow an unobstructed view of the back yard.

Picked up some more of the wound seal and all purpose gauze dressing that were on sale at Walgreens.

Put a razor edges on the new Condor knives I bought. The Bushcraft came relatively sharp, but the neck knife needed some work.

Lessons learned this week:

I woke up this morning and our refrigerator seemed to be on the fritz. The freezer door was not pushed all the way in, and after investigating, I determined the that one of the kids left it open overnight. This had caused a buildup of frost in the freezer section that basically blocked all the airflow. I told everyone not to open the fridge unless absolutely necessary until I could get the coolers and ice pulled together so I could get in and defrost it. It has been interesting to watch the family’s reaction to not having the fridge readily available. I can already tell that if we have an extended power outage, it is not going to be easy for them to adjust their new reality.